Michael Cohen, a former private attorney and Donald Trump fixer who pleaded guilty and served time in prison for paying hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels, said he was “very dissatisfied” after becoming president-elect. Sentenced to life in prison in a historic New York trial.
Cohen appeared on MSNBC’s “The Weekend” on Saturday and said there should have been “accountability” or the case should have been dismissed.
“I believe that without accountability there is no deterrence. If there is no deterrence and no accountability, what’s the point in filing a lawsuit anyway? So we can all now call him a felon president?” Cohen said.
Friday’s sentencing came after a jury found him guilty last year on 34 counts of falsifying business records related to payments made in the final days of President Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
The president-elect took to his Truth Social platform Friday and pledged to “appeal this fraud” after being sentenced to unconditional dismissal or virtually no punishment.
Cohen declared on MSNBC that “no one in this country” – Republican, Democrat or Independent – should take “comfort” in the fact that Trump is a convicted felon just over a week after taking office.
Cohen, who was disbarred from the New York State Bar and has been a fierce critic of President Trump since he was sentenced in 2018, said he had “never heard” of being unconditionally fired in his “life.” When he searched on ChatGPT, he found only one instance containing such a sentence.
He declared that Trump should have been sentenced to “conditional dismissal,” and suggested the president-elect be asked to work in soup kitchens or pick up trash along the side of a freeway on New York City’s West Side.
“I spent six years, three years in prison, three years of supervised release without a second, not a second, not a minute, not an hour, and he didn’t get me a slap on the wrist. So I’m dissatisfied,” Cohen said.
Cohen later declared that Trump, who had complained that he was the victim of a two-tiered justice system, had “taught all of us” that people are above the law.
“If you hear, ‘We are a country of law without justice,’ yes, that is accurate. And what’s worse is that the law does not apply equally to all citizens,” he said.
“There are three sets of laws. There are laws for you and me, and there are laws for average Joes and Janes, and there are laws for the powerful, whether politically powerful or financially super-powerful, and, of course, there is Donald Trump. He is unique and lonely.”
He went on to acknowledge that Trump’s election victory was the only way he could have avoided incarceration, probation and accountability, despite “everything against him.”
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“All of this has somehow become trivial to the majority of Americans who voted for him based on three words: gasoline and groceries. It’s an incredible trick,” Cohen said.
